7 Reasons You Might Not Be Getting Much Traffic to Your Podcast

One of the questions I’m asked most often, is how to bring traffic to one’s BlogTalkRadio show. This isn’t a question I can answer in a general sense. Sure, I can throw out ideas, but the truth is it’s different for everyone. There are several reasons you might not be pulling in much traffic for your podcast.

Perhaps one of these look familiar?

1. You’re not giving it enough time – Like blogging, podcasting takes time. Audiences aren’t built over night. It can take months to build up a community. Give it some time. You should notice as the weeks progress that you’re building up a slow, steady listener base. All SEO and social media experts agree, a slow and steady rise is better than occasional spikes in traffic.

2. You’re not doing anything to promote – How will people know to listen to your podcast if you don’t do anything to bring in an audience? Study up on traffic building techniques and best practices for podcasters. Study up how to bring in traffic without being a spammer. Create newsletters, use social networking, visit forums

3. Your show description is non-existent – If you have a show page with no description you’re not grabbing anyone’s interest. Be sure to have a show page that is descriptive, informative and gives folks a reason to want to listen.

4. Your show description is boring – If your show description doesn’t grab someone’s potential listeners’ attention, you’ll never build a community around your podcast. You have to give folks a reason to want to come by! If anything, get a second pair of eyes on your show’s description.( I’m always around if you’d like a second opinion!)

5. You’re not attracting the search engines – Are you using keywords? If not, you’ll wind up at the bottom of the search engine traffic. Use keywords and search terms in your show descriptions to catch the eye of search engines – and the people who use them.

6. You’re not embedding the show player in your blog or website – Did you know you can embed your show’s player on your blog or website? Under the player is the “share” button, once clicked it will bring up the code you can use. This way, anyone one visits your blog can listen at any time. One listen may lead to another as they check out your archives and subscribe to future podcasts.

7. You’re not using the social networks – Twitter, Faceboo, MySpace, Plurk and so many others are amazing tools for bringing in traffic. BlogTalkRadio even made it easy for you by including “Tweet This” and “Share This” buttons on your show pages. Do take advantage of the various social media tools available.